Mel Gibson, 2006.
With lush cinematography and a dizzying commitment to immersive realism, Gibson’s Apocalypto delivers a (slightly) secularized transformation of Dante’s descent into Hell, starting with the destruction of an idyllic jungle village by emissaries of civilization. Captured and enslaved, the hero is transported across a landscape that marks the corruption of civilization in progressively starker colors as the slavers and their captives approach ever-nearer to the temple-pyramid of the sun that lies at its heart. The second half is a thrilling anabasis as the fate of protagonist’s wife and infant, hidden in a well for safety and then trapped there and left to die by the raiders, hangs in the balance.
On Wikipedia: Apocalypto
(JTS, 3/24/2020)
